


Granting Innocence

by Squirrel_Stone



Series: Infinite [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Infinity Gems, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Protective Rhodey, Rhodey is Good with Kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 08:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squirrel_Stone/pseuds/Squirrel_Stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's been another break in at the new Facility, but this one decided to stick around long enough to make a change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Granting Innocence

**Author's Note:**

> Ties in with the [Break In](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4802309/chapters/11138315) chapter of Starting Right Now I'll Be Strong.

At exactly 2:12 in the morning on May 30th, Wanda shot out of bed with a gasp, struggling to catch her breath. Red lights flashed overhead, and it took her a moment to look up and realize they were on. “Pietro,” she breathed before throwing off the covers and running out of her room.

She got to the med bay just in time for the clear doors to close in front of her, and she pressed her nose to the glass, watching as Dr. Cho and a couple other doctors helping Pietro stand. Wanda screamed, slamming her hand on the glass in an attempt to get their attention.

Pietro looked up, smiling at her as the doctors pushed him to sit down on a bed.

A fourth doctor kneeled down next to the body of a young woman Wanda had missed before, but the second he touched her, Pietro rushed over, knocking the doctor out of the way and gathering the teen up into his arms. Wanda watched in confusion as Pietro fought off any attempts to touch the girl but didn’t object when Dr. Cho injected a sedative into his neck.

“Wanda!” Steve yelled, and the brunette whipped her head around to him. “Wanda, you can’t do anything from here, come on. The docs’ll take care of him.”

With a bit of hesitation, Wanda nodded and let Steve pull her away, but not before checking over her shoulder as the doctors moved both Pietro and the girl into hospital beds. “Who is the girl?” she asked.

Steve looked back in confusion, seeing the girl in the white sundress for the first time, hair falling over her face. “We’ll deal with her later,” he declared, he and Wanda both going to a meeting room.

“Man, it’s too early for this,” Sam groaned. “Who are we under attack from now? HYDRA? AIM? Doombots?”

“Pietro is alive,” Wanda said, and suddenly everyone was very much awake.

“How is that possible?” Rhodey asked. “He’s been dead for a month—and not just missing and assumed dead like Steve and Barnes were.”

Steve took in a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest. “I got there just in time to see the doctors inject him with something to calm him down. FRIDAY, can you play surveillance?”

“Certainly, Captain,” FRIDAY replied. The lights in the room dimmed, and one of the screens showed an image of the room Pietro had been kept in. A brunette girl walked in, back to the camera, and she began wandering around the room. Her fingers ghosted over a selection of jars lining the shelves, analyzing the contents of each one. After a moment of wandering the room, she turned and saw Pietro lying in the stasis chamber. She froze in place, eyes wide and mouth agape. Slowly, she took a step forward, then another, then another until she was right in front of the fallen Avenger.

Steve’s eyes widened as he watched the surveillance footage. The girl put one hand on Pietro’s forehead and one on his heart. Her head fell back, and she collapsed as Pietro took in a sharp breath, lurching out of the stasis chamber.

“We need to find Bucky,” Steve declared, looking at his team. “We’ve both seen this girl before, seen what she can do. She’s dangerous.”

“She brought my brother back from the dead,” Wanda objected. “Doesn’t that mean she’s on our side?”

Steve shook his head. “The only side she’s on his her own,” he countered. “In Austria, she made Schmidt walk off a platform into a fire and then ran off. I asked Peggy about it after I woke up, and she said this girl reappeared in ’48 and nearly killed the team studying the Tesseract. We have to be suspicious of everything she does.”

Natasha scoffed, watching another screen showing footage of the girl in her hospital bed. “And of course the time jump means nothing,” she said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “The Tesseract linked both your and Carter’s interactions with her. What’s bringing her here now?”

“She looked surprised to see Pietro, so she wasn’t there for him,” Rhodey said. “He was just an afterthought.”

Wanda raised an eyebrow. “Then I will kill two birds with one stone,” she said. “I will check on Pietro and find out what the girl was after. Easy as pie.”

Sam nodded. “Seems like the best idea,” he agreed. “I’ll go with, make sure nothing happens.” He jerked his head to the side, and the two left the room for the med bay.

The remaining four Avengers watched the screen, Sam and Wanda walking into Pietro and the girl’s room. Wanda looked over Pietro while Sam kept a safe distance. Wanda leaned down, kissing her brother on the forehead before pulling back and turning to the girl. Her hands began to move, her fingers twitching and letting out streams of red energy.

Instantly, the girl woke up, grabbing Wanda’s hand and pulling her in, whispering something in her ear. Wanda’s eyes turned yellow, and she nodded before looking to Sam, who was running over. Wanda thrust her hand out, throwing Sam back into the wall, but he came back towards the girl, sliding along the ground to dodge Wanda’s blasts. Just as he got close, the girl grabbed his hand.

She whispered something again, and both her and Sam’s eyes turned yellow.

Natasha cursed, running out of the room and towards the med bay.

Steve followed after her, calling out for Natasha to stop. Thanks to them both having the serum in their blood, Natasha made it into the med bay before Steve could and ran around the girl’s protectors, getting within arm’s length.

“Shit,” Steve muttered, slamming his hand on the close doors button so Wanda, Sam, and potentially Natasha couldn’t get out.

The girl grabbed Natasha’s hand and said, “Don’t let them hurt me.” Her eyes went to yellow and then faded back to bluish-green, but Natasha was unfazed.

“Yeah, nice try,” the redhead declared before punching the girl in the face, knocking her out. She moved as quickly as possible, taking out Sam and Wanda as well before they could attack her.

* * *

“So Wanda, Pietro, and Sam all fell under this girl’s thrall, but I didn’t,” Natasha declared some time later, watching the footage of the three being taken over on a loop. “That means it’s not an age thing, it’s not a gender thing, it’s not a sexuality thing, and it’s not a powers thing.”

“And what, exactly, is left after that?” Vision asked. “Sam was trained to hold out through torture and interrogation, and the twins went through enough pain under HYDRA to be desensitized, so that’s not it either.”

Steve watched the videos with the same critical eye as Natasha and Vision. “FRIDAY, show me the footage of the girl and Natasha when they first met.”

“Certainly, Captain,” FRIDAY’s clipped response came, and a video of Natasha walking into the girl’s room began to play on the screen.

The girl moved only her eyes, following Natasha’s every move even as she fought off Sam and Wanda. The second Natasha was in range, the girl’s hand shot out like lightning, grabbing Natasha’s arm. “Don’t let them hurt me,” she whispered before letting go.

“Freeze it,” Steve ordered, and the image stopped. “She’s wearing a ring or something that wasn’t there before.” He pointed out her left hand, a yellow stone band on her ring finger, along with a green one on her pinky and a blue one on her thumb. Her other two fingers had gold chains wrapped around them, and chains led from each finger to her wrist, where the joined together to make a bracelet.

“I didn’t feel it when she touched me,” Natasha said. “Then again, the yellow eyes were kind of distracting.”

Vision eyed the frame before saying, “The color of the ring and her eyes match the stone that gave me life.” He tilted his head, growing increasingly wary of the teen currently in their custody.

“Just because they’re the same color doesn’t mean they’re the same thing,” Rhodey objected. “Besides, she’s just a kid. I doubt she could control it.”

“That still doesn’t explain why she was able to control Sam and the twins but not me.”

“Or how I saw her in ’44.”

“I think it is best to assume that she is just- why is Colonel Rhodes going into her cell?”

All eyes were on the video monitor in an instant, watching Rhodey as he walked into the girl’s hospital room/cell. The teen tilted her head, eyebrows furrowed together in confusion. “So I’m guessing you’re scared,” Rhodey said. “The only orders you gave anyone was to protect you, so you must think you need protecting from us. Am I right?”

The girl nodded her head slowly.

Rhodey nodded back and sighed in response. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he replied. “Well, I promise no one is going to hurt you here. Honestly, we’re kind of scared of you too, so how about a show of good faith.” He reached out, undoing the leather straps around the girl’s wrists. She recoiled, rubbing at the red marks left behind from her own struggling. Rhodey kept a careful eye on the girl when her eyes turned yellow again for just a moment before reverting.

“Your friends are under my control no longer,” the girl said.

“Thank you,” Rhodey replied. He took a seat on the edge of the bed. “And I’m sorry we scared you. I’m Colonel James Rhodes, but you can call me Rhodey.”

The girl smiled, her shoulders relaxing. “My name is Kira, and I’m sorry I scared you as well.” Kira slowly lowered her arms so her hands rested in her lap. “Pietro isn’t supposed to be dead,” she said suddenly. “It’s not his time yet… or maybe I made it not be his time.”

“Yeah, I had some questions about that, too,” Rhodey replied, nodding his head slightly. “How did you do it? He’s been dead for weeks.”

Kira shrugged. “I just did,” she said simply. “I don’t really know how all this works except when I get upset, it’s harder to control.” Kira looked over to the door longingly. “Are you were gonna let me out? The last time, they were just gonna keep me forever.”

Rhodey’s eyebrows furrowed together in concern. “Last time?” he asked. “Were you kidnapped?”

Kira nodded her head minutely. “They weren’t gonna let me go. They said I was too important… I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Rhodey nodded back, trying to encourage the girl to continue her story. “Alright,” he finally relented. “Is there anything you do want to talk about? Like how you got here maybe?”

Kira just shook her head. “I don’t know,” she claimed. “I kinda just… wound up here. And when I saw Pietro, I knew I had to do something.”

“So you brought him back to life.”

Kira shrugged. “I guess,” she replied. “I don’t really know what I was trying to do. It’s all fuzzy.”

“Alright,” Rhodey replied, not wanting to scare the girl into silence. He took in a deep breath through his nose and let it out in a huff, shaking his head. “I’m still not entirely sure what all you’re facing, but you shouldn’t have to. No one like you should go through so much pain.”

A breathy, defeated laugh escaped Kira. “There is no one like me,” she claimed.

Rhodey hung his head for a moment before looking back up. “Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t; you still don’t deserve this,” he said. “I’m gonna go check in with the rest of the team, try to get you something to eat or drink.”

“Thank you,” Kira murmured, lying down on the bed as Rhodey stood up and headed out the door.

Head held high, Rhodey went back to the meeting room and stood before the other Avengers. “I trust her,” he claimed. “She’s a kid, she’s scared, we should take care of her.”

“I don’t,” Natasha objected. “Something she said… it sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”

“I know what you’re talking about,” Steve said with a nod. “That comment about no one being like her… it just doesn’t sit right with me.”

Rhodey let out a frustrated groan. “She was kidnapped, and we don’t even know how old she was when it happened,” he declared. “For all she knows, there isn’t anyone else like her. She can obviously control minds, and she might be some sort of precog with her comment about how Pietro wasn’t supposed to be dead. Those aren’t exactly the most common traits in the world.”

“Could she have anything to do with last week’s break-in?” Vision proposed. “The woman who took the needles and the antiseptic could not have been much older than this girl.”

“So what if she is?” Rhodey asked. “She’s still a kid, and she’s still scared to death.”

“Children can be dangerous,” Natasha said, voice low. “Especially ones who have faced those who want to use them for their own means.”

Steve sighed, straightening his back. “You’re both right,” he said. “She’s dangerous, but she is still a kid.” He looked up to the ceiling. “FRIDAY, can you find anything on Kira?”

“I’m afraid not, Captain,” FRIDAY replied. “Facial recognition does not match her with any photos on the internet whatsoever, nor does she match the description of any missing persons in her approximate age range.”

“We can’t hold her hostage,” Rhodey said shortly.

“We can’t let her run off without knowing she’ll be somewhere safe and monitored either,” Steve added. “We still don’t even know how she got here.”

Rhodey pursed his lips in frustration before finally saying, “I still promised her something to eat. I’m going to go find her a sandwich or something. We’re not going to starve her while we figure out what to do.”

Refusing to wait for a response, Rhodey left the room and headed towards the kitchen. By the time he got back to the medbay, Kira had vanished.

**Author's Note:**

> No, I didn't address why Natasha is immune. They'll figure that out later.


End file.
